New York (AFP)

Wall Street ended overall lower Tuesday, weighed down by the decline in technology stocks, sensitive to fears that an overheating of the US economy could lead to a rise in interest rates.

The Nasdaq, where the big American names in tech are concentrated, dropped 1.88% to 13,633.50 points, recording its worst session since the end of March.

The S&P 500, more representative of the American market, dropped 0.67%, to 4,164.66 points, while the index of flagship stocks, the Dow Jones, stagnated (+ 0.06%) at 34,133.03 points .

"US stocks weakened on Tuesday as investors assessed the massive sell-offs that took place among big names in tech as well as interest rate comments from US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen," analysts said. from Wells Fargo Bank.

On Tuesday, the former boss of the Federal Reserve (Fed) and current Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, indeed caught the attention of investors by saying that it may be "necessary to raise interest rates a little to that the economy does not overheat ".

Concerns about inflation and the possibility that it will eventually be accompanied by a tightening of monetary policy, despite persistent denials by the Fed, are bothering investors.

Consequently, the dollar, a safe haven, once again attracted currency traders, regaining the strength it had lost the day before (+ 0.4% against the euro around 8:00 p.m. GMT).

The Fed cut overnight interest rates in March 2020 to a range of 0% to 0.25% to deal with the economic impact of the pandemic.

Its chairman, Jerome Powell, recently reiterated that there was no question of considering raising them in the near future and that inflation, which has started to rise, will be temporary.

All the big names in tech, also called growth stocks, fell on Tuesday, starting with Apple (-3.54%) and Amazon (-1.70%), but also Facebook (-1.31%), Alphabet (-1.71%) and Microsoft (-1.62%).

The American pharmaceutical group Pfizer has indicated that it expects to sell in 2021 for 26 billion dollars of its anti-Covid vaccine developed in partnership with BioNTech, a forecast clearly raised in favor of vaccination campaigns which are accelerating in worldwide.

The laboratory does not detail apart from the benefits derived from anti-Covid vaccines, indicating only to release a pre-tax margin of about 25% to 30% on the product and to share the gross profits 50-50 with its German partner BioNTech.

The title only advanced 0.30% to 39.95 dollars.

The CVS Health pharmacy chain, for its part, reported solid quarterly sales, in particular due to the high attendance of its banners transformed into vaccination sites.

Its stock jumped 4.41%.

The cosmetics group Estee Lauder, which announced on Monday that it had accelerated its sales between January and March thanks to skincare products rather than makeup, continued to be praised on the stock market (+ 4.41%).

Among the big names on Wall Street whose results are still awaited, the automaker General Motors (GM) and the Uber chauffeur-driven car reservation platform will comply with this exercise on Wednesday.

At the end of the week, market players will learn about the unemployment rate and the level of employment in the United States for the month of April.

© 2021 AFP